Last week, we got a chance to explore the collection of papers from TCC Online conference (http://etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/). In choosing a paper to review, my criteria were that it should be current (something that would give me a glimpse of the present day direction in this field), something that would relate to online learning as well as something that would give me a chance to apply in the classroom as soon as possible. I found Shenkman’s article to be a suitable fit for this purpose.
I found myself nodding in agreement to the statement that critical thinking is like a disciplined approach to evaluating information. At the end of a teaching day, I often ask myself whether what I taught today encouraged students’ independent thinking and gave them an opportunity to stretch their minds to consider perspectives they had not seen before. And the answer often does not leave me satisfied. In an article titled ‘The Thinking Teacher’ from the journal Educational Leadership, Scherer states, “Being able to respond to both "why" and "how to" questions requires that the teacher have not only content knowledge and expertise but also the instructional skill and the time to intelligently guide students toward meaningful thinking about the content.”
The reading made me look into more resources for Critical Thinking and reminded me of a useful conference I had attended two years ago titled ‘Critical Thinking Workshop’ led by Garfield Gini-Newman. I fished out the notes and resources from there as well (feeling sad that some of our learning sits on shelves and in binders) and hope to apply some of this disciplined approach to my teaching this coming year.
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